Music review: Tallulah Rendall’s Love Carries Me Home

Christopher Jackson

Tallulah Rendall’s new album Love Carries Me Home is a beautiful work in many different ways: it arrives as a charmingly produced book with a CD on the inside sleeve, though it is also possible to listen to much of the work on Spotify and iTunes. The book itself consists of a helpful introductory essay by Rendall herself outlining the origins of the album which came out of a particularly difficult period during which a relationship ended, her father John sadly died, and she was also experiencing professional difficulties arising out of the impact of Covid-19 on her industry.

The voice that emerges in this essay is of a gentle soul, capable of challenging herself to forge growth out of adversity. Rendall recalls:

Part of my journey of Lockdown was a relationship that completely broke my confidence…yet through determined commitment, I found my way to defy the doctrine that I had begun deeply to believe; to break through the belief that I am not good enough, I am not worthy of love or care…At the time of writing what I didn’t realise was how embedded in our culture the ‘I Am Not Good Enough’ culture actually is.

It is this last observation which, I think, sets Rendall’s creativity apart: the songs become a sort of raft which we might all climb aboard and this is possible because she has made the generous observation that her own afflictions might be used as a way of assuaging those of others. Rendall understands that art begins with an acknowledgement of our vulnerability – and that this condition is also an opportunity. This album finds her time and again equal to the task of turning the pain of life into something which gathers up that pain into new musical forms.

The book itself prints the lyrics alongside excellent photography of Tallulah making the book a lovely object to own. In the lyrics themselves there is often the umistakeable note of an earned wisdom as in the song ‘I Am Not Good Enough’:

We can barricade our hearts with all the armour that we grow

Hide away from the pain, but our hearts will never know

The beauty of life, that is wanting us to know and say to ourselves

That I am loved and I, I am enough just as I am

The world appears to be at a hinge point in relation to the eternal questions of religion and materialism. In these songs, the structures of Western society are revealed to be an insufficient basis on which to build a valid and meaningful life. Rendall’s vocals remind me a bit of Joni Mitchell, swooping and diving through subtle and patient melodies: she is reassuring us that it is worth the effort to reexamine ourselves.

Of course, it’s not strictly true to say that we are enough just as we are and can sit back smug in that knowledge: Rendall in fact doesn’t think this at all. In another track ‘Be A Little Kinder’ she urges us to take the stuff of ourselves forwards into better versions of ourselves. The simplicity of the message works since it is obviously true, and always has been. Its urgency and its importance is that it is being communicated to a world in far too much of a hurry, and which too often seems to forget what once was known to almost everyone.

In a world where everything comes to us in a packaged and predictable way, listeners will feel this album as a genuinely authentic contribution. It is very much deserved that this new multiform release has been endorsed by the likes of Shirley Bassey and Jools Holland, and there are signs that she will reach a considerable audience. Let’s hope so – the world needs voices like this.

For more information go to tallulahrendal.com